A lot of people are clowning on Pete Hegseth for being an unqualified, incompetent, hard-drinking idiot who should never have been trusted to lead a softball team, let alone the world’s largest military. I am not one of those people.
As our Secretary of Defense’s job hangs by a thread, I come to praise Hegseth, not to bury him. Here is a man who has demonstrated that one not need talent, nor discipline, nor intellect to rise to this nation’s greatest heights.
A man once flagged as a potential “insider threat” by a fellow soldier is now proving that whatever damage he might have once done as an individual is far less than what he could accomplish as the military’s second-in-command.
A man whose own mother, in an email, once called him an “abuser of women” has demonstrated that whatever abuse he could heap upon his two former wives pales in comparison to that which he has inflicted on the American military by purging it of highly-qualified and competent women and people of color.
Yes, Hegseth has proven himself to be a man of exceptional ability. Never mind that those abilities are purely destructive. After all, is the military’s purpose not lethality? He has unleashed “total chaos” on the world’s mightiest fighting force, according to former Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot. But isn’t “total chaos” exactly what President Trump thrives upon? Isn’t “total chaos” precisely the conditions in which the nation now finds itself?
It’s particularly noteworthy to consider the quick unraveling of our armed forces from a place of rigid rule-following to a freewheeling, bawdy, anything goes carnival in which friends and family are allowed sneak peeks into war plans while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is shut out. Hegseth, the former Fox News entertainer is now bringing his showmanship to the Pentagon. Are you not entertained?
Hegseth is clearly an honorable man. So are they all – Hegseth and Rubio and Lutnick and Navarro and Miller and Vance and Musk. If they have overextended their ambitions, it is only because they are honorable men charged with raising the nation from the horrors of DEI, the tyranny of pronouns, the outrage of people trying to live their lives with adequate access to healthcare, education or affordable groceries.
If these men are guilty of anything, then, it is not their lofty goals, nor their greed, nor their rapacious thirst for power. Their guilt, instead, rests on caring too much for these, no their United States, a nation they wish to remake in their image. That the image they wish to fashion bears no relationship to that enshrined in our Constitution reflects a lack of imagination on behalf of the Framers.
They are made of sterner stuff, these men, than the lily-livered leakers and losers shunted from public service like so much wastewater. Hegseth exemplifies this courage, as he demonstrated at the White House Easter Egg Roll. Facing his critics head-on, he declared: “They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me.” Exactly right. His reputation, such as it is, remains intact.
Make of it what you will.
I come here to praise Pete Hegseth because it is Hegseth who best embodies the moment in which our nation finds itself. Loutish, lecherous and loose. And I come here to praise Pete Hegseth because Pete Hegseth is busy burying himself. With every word that comes from his mouth, he lowers himself further. With every Signal group chat discovered and those yet to be discovered, he makes his grave more commodious.
Let that grave he’s creating be his alone, and not those of the men and women in his care.
The post Opinion: The Defense Our Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Deserves appeared first on The Daily Beast.
